8 Hacks to Create a Magnetic LinkedIn Profile

We invest a lot of time in our education. We seek to acquire knowledge and skills in order to develop ourselves as better professionals. We wish to earn more money, of course, and we expect the best for ourselves.

However, many of us fail to understand an important aspect: The marketplace is tough and competitive. If you’re a professional, looking to embark on a fruitful professional career, you must do your best to get noticed. Social media networks have an important role in today’s job marketplace. Companies find their candidates online, as searching and connecting with prospects through sights like LinkedIn is extremely convenient, cheap, and efficient.

Personal branding matters a lot. It has been proven that employees who share content on a consistent basis can gain significant benefits in their long-term careers. Now – if you want to step up your game, you’d better start leveraging the giant professional social channel that no company neglects.

In today’s post, we’re giving you eight hacks to create a magnetic LinkedIn profile. See it like this: the better you showcase yourself and your value to the marketplace, the more opportunities you’ll have. Without further ado, let’s get started.

Be a professional and keep your profile updated

Presenting outdated information on your LinkedIn profile is just like writing a misspelled name on an exam paper. Not only will it hurt your professional reputation, it will also keep you away from many potential opportunities.

This social network, unlike most others, has a predominant professional nature. Your LinkedIn presence is basically your online resume. Make it good, keep it up-to-date and optimize it consistently. Ensure that your current industry and location are still accurate. It’s also important to have a great headline, like “Senior Copywriter and Expert Content Strategist at X Company.”

Write an incredible summary

Your LinkedIn profile summary is the place where the magic happens. It’s the spot where you can feature and courageously display your skills, knowledge, experience, unique talents and, most importantly, your value proposition. Every professional must have a unique value proposition. It’s basically your way of saying “choose me instead of my main competitor because (…value proposition…)”

Your summary should include information such as:

Career specialties

Relevant experience

Proof of results

Talents and traits (that make you valuable)

Most importantly, don’t forget to limit your “ego” and focus on what’s important. You’re not praising yourself but rather you’re selling yourself in the smartest possible way.

Emphasize your most important traits and skills

When someone enters your LinkedIn profile, they’re obviously going to analyze your summary. Your main job is to make your profile readers become interested in your skills and traits. I’m talking about skills and traits because, in today’s competitive marketplace, experience and degrees are no longer sufficient.

Many CEOs begin to realize that employees who own professional skills (niche related) are way more valuable than professionals who lack them but present knowledge and certifications. That is why your LinkedIn profile (mostly your summary) should emphasize the one or two high-quality traits that make you the perfect candidate.

Display your “soft” qualities

Displaying your soft skills could also work very well, as the modern leaders have already started to perceive emotional intelligence as an extremely important quality of an employee. So what are these soft skills?

Well, one of them is adaptability. When you’re adaptable to changes, you’re also adaptable to the marketplace, which is always changing. Employees who are collaborative and communicative are also extremely appreciated nowadays. To be able to discuss professional issues without arousing conflict is a necessary thing in every modern office.

By displaying soft skills that prove the existence of emotional intelligence, you’ll surely win a red dot in the eyes of your potential employers.

Remove unnecessary words

Remove all the unnecessary words. You don’t need them – they’re annoying and they’re going to hurt your LinkedIn’s profile performance. For examples, phrases like specialized, certified, passionate, go-getter, experienced and results-oriented are extremely annoying to most of the employers because they’re overused and because they are general terms that don’t convey tangible results.

“If your LinkedIn profile is full of buzzwords, jargons or over-used phrases, you’d better start removing all the unnecessary and leave only what’s important. Great profiles are made up of specific information, facts, unique skills, proof, and value,” notes Mark Harrell, HR manager at rushmyessay.co.uk.

Leverage visuals

One-third of the entire planet’s online activity is spent watching video content. Every big social network has gone crazy with the visual content. For example, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube are highly encouraging video content by improving its overall reach. More people will take the time to watch live video than read a text post, so it is in your best interest to get familiar with using video.

Job hunting requires you to grab the attention of recruiters and hiring managers. To do so, you should record yourself and talk to your audience directly, making sure to use eye contact and the right body language and tonality.

Create a unique URL for your LinkedIn profile

When you initially create your LinkedIn profile, the network automatically generates an ugly random URL for your page. The URL has no value to your branding or SERP ranking, so you need to take care of this aspect.

You can easily modify your public LinkedIn’s URL by following some short guidelines presented by LinkedIn team’s itself.

Stick to professional images only

If you want to be a professional, act like one. Your LinkedIn presence should be always treated with respect. For instance, you should stick to professional images only. Your main audience is probably made up of professionals. Well, most of these professionals develop high standards and so they develop high expectations too. To make a good first impression, ensure that every picture of you inspires trust, confidence, and power.

Takeaways

Developing a professional LinkedIn presence is probably the one thing that’ll set you apart from the “standard” employee. When you realize how critical personal branding is for your career, especially in today’s digital environment, you should immediately commit to making progress. Fortunately, improving your LinkedIn’s profile is not as hard as it seems. It takes a little time, patience and work, but the benefits will make it worth the effort.

Brandon Stanley is fond of writing and everything connected with careers advice, job-seeking and human resources. He is a professional journalist, speechwriter and editor. Brandon finds his inspiration in music and writing. Meet him on Facebook and LinkedIn.